This video is pretty short, but still gives the big picture of the main tools that are used in advertising. The statements are chosen to leave an impression, to be memorable and spread a positive message. Also, they ensure that if people have the chance to get the product, they will come away with the same positive feelings.

I find this video interesting because of the way the editor used effectively the 2 minutes to present important ideas in marketing strategies. He focuses on how language can conceive emotions and trust.

Some people succeed in opening their businesses because they developed their knowledge in accounting, finances and economics, and never gave up. However, it is important to know how to behave and interact in the public sphere to create a certain connexion and build confidence over a population. For example, when one creates an advertisement, he wants the targeted amount of people to believe in his product. Therefore, he will find the right expressions and words to create a sentiment of confidence. This is what the above video explains perfectly.

*MADZA 3 COMMERCIAL : LANGUAGE IMPLICATION

Everyday when I go to school, I have to pass by the Place Bonaventure which is a hotel complex located in Downtown Montreal. Obviously, I am confronted everyday to countless publicities. One day, I was going to take my metro when I saw this tremendous poster and I absolutely had to take a picture. The slogan "De l'espace pour rever. De l'espace pour se realiser" is in fact describing the moment you are supposed to experience if you buy the Mazda's new car model. It means that you will have enough space in that car to dream and to become someone better. To be accomplished, satisfied or realized.

I started thinking about those words. They are so inspiring when you read them at first, but then some questions arise.How can a car make someone feel accomplished? How can a material object can be related to so many irrationnal concepts? Why do companies make so many premises? Can they guarantee that the consumer will go through these powerful emotions?

In the same idea, this advertisement really suggests that buying this specific car will change you as a person. It will allow you to feel alive, free which are words with strong and positive connotation.

These specific cases really stimulated and activated my interest in this field of study. I will learn more about the use of language in this context and many other while reading more academic pieces.

----Both of the slogan video and Mazda's commercial depict how language can be shaped and how it can create certain emotions within a targeted population. Further studies about language and emotions will whether come to enhance or disapprove my first prediction: Language and emotions are correlated and therefore, companies can shape and use specific words to influence or manipulate people.----

*"A Pragmatic Study of CNN and BBC News Headlines Covering the Syrian Conflict"

The above research called "A Pragmatic Study of CNN and BBC News Headline Covering The Syrian Conflict" is written by two instuctors Fareed Hameed Al-Hindawi and Abid Hmood Ali. They are located in two different universities in Iraq, but both wanted to study and compare how two different news channel use language to transmit ideologies. They therefore worked together in order to understand the tools used by important writers to report situations. They decided to focus on the Syrian civil war that started on March 15th, 2011 and is still occuring today. The two professors thoroughly examined fifty-six CNN and BBC headlines to prove how language can be encoded with different meaning and that these meanings depend on the different writers' own way of interpreting and expressing situations. They also decide to classify all the articles in the different types of speech acts that exist because they claim that it is a productive way to really understand the intended meaning set by the authors when writing articles.

It is important to understand the different speech acts to understand how communication can be separated in different categories. It has been found out the most of the headlines used by the two known news channels frequently use assertiveness as a speech act.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines assertiveness as:

“Forthright, positive, insistence on the recognition of one's rights”

However, after having studied the fifty-six headlines of only one specific event, CNN stands out from BBC by using the commissive speech act which is the remarkable use of "promises, oaths, pledges, threats, vows". On the other hand, BBC employs more expressives which is making "assessments of psychological states or attitudes: greetings, apologies, congratulations, condolences, thanksgivings." (https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/edling/handouts/speechacts/spchax2.html)

What conclusion can emerge after reading this study?

I personally think that it is interesting how Fareed Hameed Al-Hindawi and Abid Hmood Ali compared two well-known news channel to show the use of different strategies in order to spread a message. This can prove how language can be shaped or handled differently. This enhances the idea that some news can spread and communicate different messages, even though they had the same foundations. They can be reported and explained differently. It can generate contrasting reactions and build different emotions which consequently form divergent interpretations.

*"They Are All Armed and Dangerous!

Biased Language Use in Crime News With Ingroup and Outgroup Perpetrators"

This research was written by Jeroen Vaes, currently working in the Department of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences, Marcella Latrofa, Caterina Suitner and Luciano Arcuri that are all in the Department of Psychology and Socialization located in the University of Padova in Italy. They all treated the issue of the presence of liguistic bias in crime news reports. In fact, they decided to focus on Italian news article to understand and learn how they use language to report crime that were perpetrate by outgroup in contrast to ingroup members. They divided their research in two parts :

• Study 1: looking for linguistic biases in crimes reports
• Study 2: how language affects the presence of stereotypes

I decided to focus more on Study 1, since it is more related to what I am analyzing.

As I stated earlier, the study 1 studied criminals acts that were reported in Italian newspapers. The focus however is on comparing immigrants and the inhabitants and seeing what words and expressions were used depending on their nationality. Was there any discrimination? Are they intensifying the significance of the situation for one of the two groups? The researchers tried as much as possible to keep every other characteristic as stable as possible so that it would not create any other disagreement with the statements and testimony. In other words, there was similarities in terms of gravity of the crimes.

What are the conclusions?

In fact, the Italian newspaper used a bias language to discribe crimes that were comitted. The two table that I will place below show that when an immigrant is described, there is a more important use of aggravating adjectives whereas Italians are in the attenuating category of adjectives (Figure 2). Also, the minority group was more likely to be characterized as a noun that Italians'. This means that the authors of the Italian newspaper often categorized the immigrants as a single outgroup which supposes that they use a "categorical label".

For me, this study really shows how words can be structured and manipulated easily depending on one's perceptions. It enhances on of the first assumptions that I made earlier in my blog: that everybody has its own reality. The thing is, that nowadays, media takes an important part of our everyday lives and we are facing and absorbing so many informations that we don't even know if they are really authentic. After having read this article, I realized how some societies can think in a different and discriminating way. Some people are closed-minded, some people are too enthusiastic and yet they all have the right to communicate their views on the media. I think it is interesting that now we can easily encounteer new ideas and beliefs on social media. It helps us having a big picture, contrasting ideas and certain informations that we couldn't have access 50 years ago. However, newspapers or other significant platforms should report informations without subjectivity. We want informations that are believable. We want statistics, numbers and images, not the writers' view on the event.

Is it even possible?

Language is so easy to mold and construct: there are so many ways to change it. We are all humans. We all have ways to descibe situations and when something is occuring in our lives or around us, we express it using our own vocabulary that is influenced by our own reality, our own perception. I think it could be the same situation for journalists. Even though if they have to remain neutral, their vocabulary is filled with emotions that they have experienced when learning or reading about the situation. I will further in this blog, try to come with an article about the relation between language and emotions, because I think that it has a certain connection with how media can be filled with informations that is biased and opinionate.

Interesting fact in the article:

"The association “Carta di Roma” (see Morcellini, Binotto, Bruno, & Lai, 2009), for example, that monitors the Italian media for biased reporting of racial/ethnic minorities, has found that 76.2% of the times immigrants are mentioned in the Italian media, they appear in crime news."

I found this really thought-provoking Ted Talk that was disclosed by a high school student called Sophia Lobkowicz. She was interested in learning more about the view "US media has towards migration" which made her analyze how language was used in three reputable American news channels : CNN , The Washington Post and Fox news. The first thing that I found interesting is that she cited the three news' mission statements to then contrast them with statistics about the extent to which they use a neutral language.

*** Collocations = "The habitual juxtaposition of a particular word with another word or words with a frequency greater than chance." -Oxford Dictionary

***Clusters = "A group of things of the same type that grow or appear close together" - Oxford Dictionary

As we can see, Fox News is clearly the news program with the highest amount of unbiased language. It is followed by CNN with 34.5% of negative collocations and 35.2% of clusters. The one the uses less inclined language is the Washington Post. However, even though more neutral language is used, there is still an amount that proves that language is not 100% unbiased. This comes against their mission statement as it is for CNN and Fox News also.

Another interesting fact that she stated about the Washington Post was "they would often use the phrase "people say" or "people are" as a way of getting their opinion across". I strongly believe that this enhance the idea that opinion can be divulged in media in other ways. It can be as subtle and implicit as putting "the blame" on people to confess certain judgements or assumptions.

This conference really shows how important news organizations can shape language and manipulate views. I think it is alarming to know how important platforms with millions of viewers can spread messages that are not necessarily as fair, accurate and without judgement as they claim to be.

**"Media Impact on Girls in the US, China and India through a Gendered Filter"

Her claim :

1. Girls are not valued in the same way that boys are.

2. "The media that influences girls throughout the world generally originates in the West, and is almost always created and disseminated by males"

3. "Girls are told who they should be and who they should seek to become primarily through the lens of males, and most often those messages come through media and a Western male framework"

** She wants women to take a major part in media, because it is not healthy for them to be mentored mainly by men. She claims throughout the article that in media, a tremendous amount of informations and perceptions are regulated by men, which restrains the possibility to have a broader and objective look on various situations. ***

This article emphasizes a lot on women's position in society. However, it is interesting to see what positions they take in media and for what reason they take place in media. It has been found that one of the reason they are also integrated in the mainstream media is because they can appeal to more people. The author claims that it is "a matter of globalized public policy". With that said, I was thinking at what point few people know that. Few people know what happens "behind the scenes". Most of us, in my opinion, think that media can be biased at the extent to which the sharing of information can be controlled and shaped in a certain way. After reading Holmes' article, I realized that even the authors behind the writings or the actors behind the screens are chosen for a specific reason. They are chosen also based on their position in society and on how they should appear to be. They are modelled in a precise way. This enhances the idea that what is shown or told to us is often embodied for specific purposes that can sometimes be driven by wrong motivations.

The author also explains how children are targeted by media in different situation because they are the most at risk to be influenced and manipulated. Different important platforms have used advertising as a tool to mislead children (Disney channel is part of them).

However, I am mostly interested to know more about :

1. How are women presented in some societies? (culturally speaking)

2. How are they represented and used in media ? And for what purposes they are represented in a specific way in advertisements, televisions?

3. Does that article prove that biased (spoken, written and non-verbal) language is used to mislead or influence a population?

With Kristie's Holmes help, I could answer to all my questions. The article is about gender issues in America, China and India. However, I wanted to focus more on China and USA.

1. How are women presented in some Chinese societies? What does media promote? (culturally speaking)

China:

• In some modernized China places, girls are influenced by western media which promotes peculiar and unhealthy ideals for feminine beauty. It has been found out that, because of this media inclination for a certain beauty standard, girls in Hong Kong were pressured to eat less, so that they can achieve the "common" model of beauty. China is one example among countless others. The girls in question, however, "called for public policy to curb the promotion of an impossible ideal for girls, which included an educational piece for societal understanding of the dangers of extreme dieting."

Such non-verbal representations in media of what should be a women are totally biased and unjust, in my opinion.

2. How are they represented and used in media ? (and for what purposes)

USA:

• In different types of advertisings, Holmes explains that girls are used to sell products with their use of their physique. We have all once heard that girls are used as a sexual object to attract men. They have to be thin, beautiful, healthy, happy girls. The author however, raises an interesting point: They are often selling the opposite such as unhealthy food. She also claims that "men are preferred, and if women are viewed, it is in certain specific contexts (often sexualized)".

3. Does that article prove that biased (spoken, written and non-verbal) language is used to mislead or influence a population? + MY REACTION

The first thing that I learned when I read this article is that, depending on the culture, women are perceived differently. I didn't put all the informations up there because the author has raised so many issues. Women are viewed they way they are since so many years because of what media promotes. The key thing to remember is that media plays an important role in spreading messages. It has been shown how people's view on women can be strengthen.

In USA, Holmes has found that :

General Electric was owning $157 billion worth of media (in 2010) and was far-off followed by 5 other powerful media ownership companies. She came to the conclusion that one company could control most of the messages that were seen by people like you and me. Only by being wealthy, General Electric could use different forms of media to share ideas and messages. The thing that surprised me the most was that "the vast majority of decision makers, creators and buyers of media" were male. This explains why women were represented in a precise way. This proves how media can be used to misguide and share one perspective. It can strengthen prejudice and stereotypes against women. The article did not touch anything about racism, but it could also be something to analyze later on.

During these last few days, as I was stuck home forced to Netflix (hehe), I started browsing for some series that are more mentally challenging. When I say "more" it's because I downloaded Disney + at first, but watching princess movies or Hannah Montana was not really proactive. Then, I discovered a TV show called:

**"100 Humans: Life's Questions. Answered."

The purpose of this TV show is to provide certain answers to questions about human behaviors. They, in fact, do different types of experiments on 100 humans of all "ages and backgrounds" from all around the United States. The thing that made me doubt at first was that I was not agreeing with the fact that they generalize their answers. Taking 100 humans for experiments, for me, is not representative enough of the whole human population. In the show, many times, we see their final results with statistics that are ranged from 0 to 100%. Therefore, everyone of them represents 1%. It is an easy way to calculate, but the outcome, in my opinion, is less believable and accurate. Even though I was not agreeing with some of their methods, I noted 2 positive things about this show.

The fist one is that we are really able to see 100 human behaviors! It is interesting to witness people's emotions towards some of the experiments, their perceptions and their answers. I acknowledged that the answers might not be accurate and that 100 persons is not enough to represent the tremendous amount of humans that are living on this planet. However, I noticed many times that some poeple's perceptions are similar to mine. I could relate to some extent to them which was pleasant.

Also, few times during the episodes, some humans were able to convey some interesting statements. One of the girl said that she would not have imagined herself talking to some persons that were in that TV show. She stated that, when you look at someone in the street and you see that physically their different than you and their position in society is different, you might think that your relation with them is totally impossible. She discovered, after being placed in "the same basket" with different types of people with different backgrouds, age, race, social status, that she can have multiple common point with them. She was happy to take part of the show because she met a lot of exceptional people.

This shows how we should all accept and even embrace people's differences. They bring us new perceptions, new experiences, new knowledge and behavior. Everything is interesting to learn. Everyone has something interesting to say. Life is too short to isolate ourselves or be mean with other people.

Well, well, well, let's come back to the main thing I wanted to say. So I started watching few episodes of that TV show and then I saw one called "Are you biased?". I found that interesting because that is my topic's main issue/question.

They did different types of experiments :

One of them had as a question : "do we all have a gender bias?" . The researchers took two actors who had to wear the same clothes, to recite the same speech, to have the same occupation in life, even their name was the same. The only thing that was different is their gender. They were both doctors. Two main questions were asked about them:

1. Would you trust Jessie if she were your doctor?

70% would put their trust in the female Jessie to be their doctor, whereas 40% would put their trust in male Jesse.

2. Do you think that Jessie makes more than 100,000$ a year?

63% think that male Jesse earns more than 100,000$ per year compared with 37% for female Jessie.

The thing that surprised me the most is that throughout the experiment, some of the humans stated that male Jessie did not look really smart and that they would not trust him. They, in fact, trust more female Jessie. They see her as a smart girl. However, even if they do the same job, the results say that many people think that they are not paid equally.

"They still assume society places a lower value on her worth."

Throughout the whole TV show, many scholar came to give their view on the different issue which gave a little more credibility to the results.

Another question really appealed to me when watching the episode: "Are we biased when it comes to romance?"

The experiment was that the 100 humans had to match 6 persons together. They were 3 men and 3 women. Everybody, with one exception, got it wrong. In fact, there was 2 homosexual couples and only one heterosexual couple. However, only one women found out the actual answer, but everyone else assumed that there was no homosexual couple.

The Socioliguistics Expert, Dr. Nicole Holliday, stated that most of them used "probalistic measures". They assumed that, by having to place all the 6 persons into couples, they were all hetero, because statistically it is a fact.

There was also one of the 100 humans that was really surprised to see two women together. Dr. Holliday said that, because of media representation of lesbian couples, people "might have ideologies of lesbian or bi-women such that they are supposed to be more masculine, because they do not see that very often, it is not what they expect" (18:49).

I really find that interesting because she talked about media representation and how people can then, assume things, based on what they have seen in media. This enhances the idea that many of our knowledge comes from external influences and what we perceive today, is maybe only based on what media has told us all of our life. This is somehow scary. This is why we have to be more informed and look for many other sources to have a broader perspective on things and be like the one human who was the only one to acknowledge and recognize homosexual place in society.

***"Hostile Media Perceptions in the Age of Social Media: Following Politicians, Emotions, and Perceptions of Media Bias"

By Brian E. Weeks, Dam Hee Kim, Lauren B. Hahn, Trevor H. Diehl, and Nojin Kwak

In 2016, the media coverage of the presidential election tended to be more unfavourable than favourable towards the candidate. This negativity encouraged Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton to speak out publicly to adress that issue. They considered that there was a tremendous amount of biased coverage against their camapaigns.

In this research, the media coverage during the United States 2016 presidential election will be examined thoroughly. They want to find out how individuals will perceive the elections and what drives their beliefs regarding politics after their favorite candidate's speech about media coverage.

"This study seeks to better understand how hostile media perceptions develop in the contemporary political media environment" (p.375).

1. How is social media use associated with perceptions of media bias?

Now that we have so many social media platforms, influential people can directly speak with the public without any colossal effort. They can therefore "bypass traditional media outlets and speak [...] in a more personalized way" (p.375). Nowadays, anybody can receive political information by following various politicians on Twitter, Facebook, or on any other platform.

Does that mainly contributes to hostile media perceptions? The answer is yes, based on that article.

How is that?

It has been found in this research that people that use regularly social media platforms are "up to five more times likely" to follow the social media feed of a politician that they support compared with an opposed politician account. The politician know that and they use that at their advantage. They will persuade their supporters and suggest that media is biased when it is against their side. They will also promote in-group identification which can, again, "stengthen hostile media perceptions". The authors explained that, by heightening the group identification, "in-group favouritism and out-group derogation" is more likely to happen. In this study, they want to highlight that "when group identity is made salient, partisans tend to perceive neutral media to be biased against their side" (p.377). In other words, the more someone feels connected with his group, the more he will reject any type of declaration that can go against his side, disagrees with his group/collectivity.

In my opinion, I think the above statement makes sens at the extent to which it can apply on different other spheres of life. Let's take for example a family member. If you are really close to your siblings and you share the same perpectives, point of view and values, you will directly disagree with someone who goes against you, who do not share the same ideologies. I think is is the human basic properties to be partisan, because we all have different backgrounds and knowledge. Not everyone has the same principles and priorities. I think it is something to be worked on, but we can't drastically change our perspectives and our way to operate.

2. Through which mechanism (how) hostile media perceptions can emerge?

Emotions.

The research claims that the hostile media perception is correlated with our emotions, which I find interesting. Their study aims to prove that "discrete emotions like anger, anxiety, and enthusiasm have unique effects on individuals' political beliefs and perceptions" (p.378). The answer to that issue will then strengthen the link between following politicians on social media and followers' hostile media perceptions.

Findings:

• Politicians are able to use social media to strengthen anger about their oponent and enthusiasm about their own campaign. They found out that anger is related to perceptions of media bias because it is associated with partisan biased (group favouritism animated with anger).
• On the other hand, political anxiety is not related to hostile media perception due to the frequent association with open-mindedness and on the equal attention of both political arguments (position, views).
• Positive emotions lowered hostile media perceptions : "if one feels hopeful about news coverage, it is less likely that they will also see bias in that coverage".

Based on those findings, we are able to see that the more someone experiences negative emotions towards media, the more he will tend to favour one position. A politician can use that in their favor. If they promote anger towards the media coverage because it "treats them unfairly" , it can, in fact, reinforce people's perceptions on that issue and make them choose one side. Trump, by being allowed to speak up for himself in front of people is in fact building a relationship of trust with his partisan. He makes them cherish his side and experiencing anger against everything else that opposes his beliefs. This option is more effective and advantageous in the political world, because the above results show that positive feelings towards media tends to encourage a more broad view on issues. Even anxiety promotes open-mindness because people will want to see all the political arguments to choose their final party.

I think this proves how manipulation can be generated by emotions. Since so long ago and even today, propaganda has been used to control a targeted amount of population. With strong images and convincing words, it has strengthen ideologies, beliefs, opinion. But how? By aiming people's emotions. Encourage more people to go to labour by showing that women too have the tenacity and vitality to go to work. Show confidence, beauty. Encourage people to go to war to do their "duty". Remain an important totalitarian leader by calling yourself "father of the family". I am giving example of history to prove how emotions have always been targeted to control people's attitude and comportment.

There are so many sides to the pictures, so many things to learns, issues to study thouroughly, but many people are forced or uncounciously guided in a precise road. I think, again, that we should raise awareness on this issue. It is important to stay the more neutral possible to really not be manipulated in any spheres of life. After reading all of these research about media coverage, media use of bias language to shape perceptions, and many more, I realize how easily people can be influenced.

ON ELECTION DAY (2016) ...

**LET'S TALK ABOUT FOOD MARKETING

So, as I spent many hours on Instagram these last days, I decided to follow some inspirational and educative pages, because I could not see people's challenges anymore. For those who didn't know, the last two weeks encouraged most of the teenagers on instagram to do push-up challenges, posting ulgy pictures of themselves for 24 hours, posting pictures when they were young, and many others. It was entertainent to a certain extent. I wanted to see something inspirational. Therefore, I followed this page called intrepreneurs and I saw a specific video of a women called Kate Cooper. She is a Marketing Consultant to the Food Industry. She gave a speech about the marketing strategies around the food industry.

She starts her speech with "I'm going to give you some of the secrets about how we make you buy what we want you to buy" which totally appealed to me.

Throughout her lecture, she focuses on the three strategies to sell food. She calls the third one "the secret weapon".

1. Everybody believes the Label

ex: Farm Fresh, 100% natural, butcher's choice.

She explains that

"Concentrating animal feeding operation" is not appealing, even thought it is the real way of depicting this process.

2. Focus on Progress (which is explained below)

She reveals a basic principle of marketing which is choosing the right choice of words. She claims that "by using the right choice of words, [...] we focus the conversation the way we want it to" (4:09).

SIDE EFFECTS OF INTENSIVE FARMING (too many animals in a small space, cruelty on a big scale)

-Diseases

-50% of all the antibiotics used in the world are used on farm animals

3. You (SECRET WEAPON)

"the power of willful ignorance cannot be overstated"

What does that mean? It means that people do not want to face reality. They do not want to ask themselves questions such as where does the product come from? How the animals were treated?

PERSONAL VIEW

I found the speech inspiring as well as impressive mostly because I was not expecting the ending. I was not expecting that, as a Marketing Consultant, she would be that honest. Even people's reaction at the end were significant. I think that she made a really good point that I did not develop earlier. Most of humans purposefully avoid some issues because it would mean a tremendous change in their lives. We somehow love to have our comfort and important companies aim for that. I take for example my parents. They lived in Romania for 32-33 years before coming to Canada, and they were under a communism regime for half of their lives. Before the revolution in 1989, there were only local markets in which you were able to buy low-priced natural food. You could raise any type of animal you wanted in your backyard. My father calls that simplicity. Was it better during communism? On some scale yes, on other clearly not. (topic is loaded with different issues that are not related necessarily to my subject). After the revolution, "the big names" came and wiped out all the local merchants who were actually good for people. Food was now processed under unknown infrastructure, everything was industrial. Nowadays, we do not know where our food comes from, how it was raised, what it has inside, and do we want to know? Maybe people are scared of the answer. It is unfortunate to know that now, what is called "100% biological" is more expensive and we don't even know if it's really authentic. I strongly believe that most of us are scared to leave their old habits and boycott the big corporations and food chains that totally lie to us. Since everybody follows their sayings, they will continue to do these awful things. The thing to also remember is how specific their choice of words are, and how it misleads people. Everything starts from that. Communication. Influence. Manipulation.

The above link contains sensitive context. Must be avoided if one doesn't want to be disturbed.

"This is what looks like when 5 corporations own 90% of the media"

Here is a footage of 5 different corporations' statements commenting on the same subject. It is not an academic source and we can't know if it is edited or not. However, everything that we see on social media is not necessarily correct and authentic. I think we are bombarded with so many informations and videos on social media, but no one is really skeptical about the informations received. I think this video is both funny and alarming. We can perceive it in two contrasting ways. The fact that they all state the same information the same way could, in fact, make the information more accurate. Different sources describing the same situation in the same way can prove that it was seen and depicted correctly since everybody agrees on it. On the other hand, the fact that they are saying exactly statements is odd. It seems like a script. Like someone behind the screen is dictating what to say for the "good" of the population. Maybe I'm being too skeptical, but I really believe, that our mainstream media is censoring many information.

THE OUTCOME ON PEOPLE'S VIEWS AND ATTITUDES ...

"Watching Each Other: Portrayals of Gender and Ethnicity in Television Advertisements"

by : CHRISTINE M. RUBIE-DAVIES SABRINA LIU and KAI-CHI KATIE LEE

From : The University of Auckland

This research aims to examine how the media portrays gender and ethnicity to then study the outcome on the population. The authors assembled more than 3,000 advertisements in New Zealand television advertisements. They found out that, now, men and women are not depicted less stereotypically compared to not too long ago. They also examined how minority goups, Asians, Maori and Pacific Island peopel were depicted in advertisement.

However, two important thing appealed to me when reading Katie Lee's and Liu's research.

1. The Cultivation Theory

2. How various ethnic groups are presented in the American television.

I think it is more accurate to talk about our neighbours situation because we also have access to their TV channels, radios, newspapers, and so on.

The first thing that is interesting to talk about is the Cultivation Theory because I never heard of it, but is is a...

In other words, with the cultivation theory, we aim to prove that the more you watch television, the more your perceptions and beliefs are closely linked to what is portrayed on television. The author claimes that, in fact, " those with more moderate viewing habits were able to judge more accurately actual crime rates and percentages of the elderly within society" (p.177) and that "cultivation researchers have also examined the effects of other media on the attitudes of the public". Indeed, not only watching television can have a negative impact on people, but reading a newspaper too. A study made by Masto and colleagues in 2007 examined how reporting crimes committed by Latinos have an impact on peoples' views and behaviors afterwards. In fact, the way media has decided to report ethnic minorities crimes made other people have a negative attitude towards Latinos in real life. Therefore, media misrepresentation can lead a certain amount of population to change their attitude towards a certain issue. It is also interesting because the cultivation theory also highlights the idea that one has the total control of what program to watch. However, people do not have the same authority when it comes to advertisements. They are confronted to different stereotypical representations of women, men, ethnic groupe because it appeals to most of the people unfortunately.

"Bang and Reece (2003) have argued that not just the misrepresentation of groups in advertising is likely to have a cultivation effect but also that the under- or over-representation of groups can affect viewers’ perceptions (p.178).

The second thing that really captivated me is that the United States is known to have a diverse population with different backgrounds. However, in television, Caucasion charaters are totally monopolizing the screen compared to the African Americans or other ethnic groups. It has improved over the last few years but they are rarely "found in major roles" (p.180) and can even be depicted in stereotypical ways. I will list below how this research describes African Americans, Asian Americans and Hispanic roles in television.

Impact on the youth:

The fact that African American males are depicted as athletes is in a certain way positive for children, because they can have a role model and be motivated. However, the study show that it can also be problematic since they over-emphazise on their physical skills and disregard other skills such as the intellect.

Also, the way the Asian Americans are depicted is totally emphasizing on their technical skills and the fact that they are hardworking. This can be positive if we are not, neglecting, on the other side, their aptitude to also take part of social and home settings.

The fact that they also never put hispanic people in a major roles can suggest "to those watching their powerlessness and unimportance in society" (p.181).

All of these depiction lead to the impact on children's perceptions. In fact, it has been found in a study that focused on advertisements during "children's programming" (p.181) that those around 10 years old felt that minorities groups are not portrayed as frequently as it should be. They also stated that minorities were more negatively depicted than whites.

My view : The first thing that I would like to acknowlege is how this research have sources outdated if I might say. I think from 2003 until today we improved our vision towards minorities, genders and many more. Especially in Canada, I think we are used to be around so many people with different backgrounds and we learn to accept and embrace differences. Some other sources were from 1995, 25 years ago which again I think is not fully accurate today. However, it is still interesting and important to be informed about our history and previous attitudes and mentalities. Many stereotypes are still present in advertisements and there is still work to do to acheive equality. There are many movement today to protest against discriminations and racism and to fight for civil rights such as #dresslikeawomen, #blacklivesmatter, and so on.

I think it is important to understand also that when language in media is also related to the nonverbal and written language. Sometimes, images are more impactful than words. Advertisement work with emotions and representations. They sell dream, but they can sometime be harmful for their viewers. This research also highlights on children's perceptions after viewing a multitude of advertisements and I think it is beyong important to respond to their reactions. Showing and spreading ideas that are discriminatory or emphasizing on only one characteristic to describe an ethnic group is totally incoherent and unreasonable. We should not be labelled under one category. We are all different and this is why people who control media should open their eyes the way these innoncent children did, and change their behavior. It has a terrible impact on some people's attitude which leads to disunion, jugement and hate against people. This is what we should avoid because "l'Union fait la force" !!

AND.... FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MATTER ........